The important thing about that exploitation of Chinese labour

We do tend to think that this isn’t one of the terrors of the modern world:

China is mounting an economic assault on Gen Z – and it will end in disaster

Apparently Shein intends to grow its business. Providing more and lower cost clothes to the youth of today.

Yet perhaps the biggest losers stand to be its legion of unquestioning young customers, and the fashion industry’s attempts to convince the world that it really has changed for the better.

The youth of today getting more of what they want - clothes - and cheaper just doesn’t sound like making losers of the youth of today to us.

The truly important number in here though we insist is this:

Then, last autumn, a Channel 4 documentary reported that factory workers earned an average of £19 for a typical 18-hour shift,

Those are not high wages even by Chinese standards. The hours are well over the legal maximum and the pay seems to be half the minimum wage of even the poorest Chinese province. No, we’d not like to work for such sums. No, we do not support such law-breaking if indeed that is what is happening.

And yet. Using Angus Maddison’s numbers as updated (in 2011 $ at PPP and GDP per capita, so not the same number at all but a very useful comparison) we can see that Chinese living standards, on average, were about $1,000 a year in the year 1000AD. In 1500, about $1,200. In 1911 (a year of revolution) around $900. In 1978, after those glorious years of Maoism, $1,700 (not far off England in 1400 AD, ). By this measure they’re now $13,000 and change.

So, what are these wages at these factories? Perhaps $25 a day for a 300 day work year - $7,500. Adjust a bit to take us back to 2011 international dollars (maybe 30% inflation in the USD over that time) and call that $5,000 a year.

Wages and GDP per capita are not directly comparable, not at all. Wages will, on average, be lower than GDP per capita for obvious reasons. But, still, we can see the direction of travel here.

The claim is that $5,000 a year in wages (in 2011 $) is the most vile durance. This is what the oppressed at the bottom of the Chinese pile of vast inequality (and China is grossly more unequal than any single country in Europe) are getting. Yet that’s at least twice and given the difference between wages and GDP somewhere between 2.5 times and 5 times the average for the entire economy back when China was more equal under Mao.

So, what matters? Inequality? Or that economic growth which lifts all boats?

Well, that this 5 times the real living standard is now considered so low that it’s illegal in China does give us a very good demonstration of the growth being the most important part of what makes life better, doesn’t it? And that is why we think that’s the important number here. Yes, £19 a day is a low wage. It’s also vastly higher than the average even within living memory - isn’t economic growth a lovely thing?

Perhaps, to improve the human experience, that’s the thing we should concentrate upon then? Growth?